Zhongyongdaoist

Well, you know there is a saying 'one man's point is another man's quibble') All the venerable translators got this concept wrong. In Confucian (or any other) texts JIN does not mean to develop, it literally means 'to get rid, to exhaust, to run out of' nature. A total opposite to cultivation. But it is the root of all magic. That's all, hope not too contentious. If you would like a a detailed explication let me know.) A detailed explication would be interesting, that is why I asked. In my own looking at some of these passages I have already looked at the "exhaust, use up, empty" translations and find them suggestive in certain contexts and passages, but not in others. ZYD

Thanks 9th, I always appreciate your clear and lucid contributions. Thank you Marblehead, your reply is part of the reason why I prefaced my comments with the phrase "with all due respect", because I believe that there is a lot of respect to you as a person who has put a lot of thought into what you espouse and in many ways seem to have grown significantly as a person because of it. However, your own answer brings up part of the problem, which is the reduction of Confucian and Confucianism to the surviving writings still attributed to Confucius, in this case probably limited to the Analects, and the totality of Confucian literature, that existed even in the pre-Qin period, much less the later aspects of the tradition. I have not merely read the Analects, I have studied them, and I wouldn't blame anyone for not being positively impressed by them. When I became interested in Confucianism back in 2000, it was after 35 or so years of neglect, and neglect for pretty much the same reasons that everyone else on the Dao Bums ignores them, the popular opinions about and conceptions of, Confucianism. When I read Tu Wei-ming's Humanity and Self-Cultivation, I was frankly amazed at the reality versus the misconceptions about Confucianism, and based on my readings of later works in the classical Confucian canon, such as Mencius and the Zhongyong, what relation they had to what Confucius really thought and whether the Analects, as basically "the collected sayings", was any fair indicator of what he might have thought. After several years of reading and reflecting on the Analects I decided that a convincing answer to the question of how much of the Analects is really what Confucius thought is not possible, and I can only say that I think at best, parts of the Analects may be representative of his thinking, but that it is hard to tell which ones and how you could judge the authentic ones from those attributed to him. At this time, I tend to think that the more mystical and deeper levels of later Confucianism have a very real connection to what he thought and believed, however, I couldn't even begin to justify that belief in any short discussion, nor do I find it more than a strong probability, and therefore will not even attempt to now. ZYD

This actualize thing is rather funny. What does it even mean? Muller did not really know what to do with the original word 盡 jin, so he went with a catch-all actualize. Except jin is a total opposite of actualize https://chinese.yabla.com/chinese-english-pinyin-dictionary.php?define=盡 尽Trad. 盡 jìn to use up to exhaust to end to finish to the utmost exhausted finished to the limit (of sth) all entirely (Emphasis added, ZYD) You perhaps prefer Legge more literal translation of jìn? The question is not what any character can be taken to mean in any possible circumstance, but what it can reasonably be taken to mean within the context of the text itself, so the question is within the context does "actualize" convey in modern English the same thing as "cultivates to the utmost", and I can only hope that someone who has striven to "finish to the utmost" the cultivation of his "nature" (性, xìng), his shoots of goodness as Legge says, has made it actual, rather than leaving it as a mere unrealized potential. If I wanted to dig through texts I could find similar uses of jìn, in Mencius and other sources, and similar translation of jìn, by many different translators, so the question is, do you really have a point to make or are you simply trying to be contentious by quibbling over "might be" meanings? ZYD

Yes it is Good, simple straightforward answer there Taoist Texts, but not enough for pigs and fishes. I can only do so much, but I can try. With all due respect to Marblehead, or any of the others who make comments about Confucianism here, If I asked any of them to quote a single Confucian text to back up their assertions about Confucianism, how many could reply off the top of their heads? All I see around here are "Taoists" attacking Confucianism on the the authority of Laozi and Zhuangzi. So who are the respecters of "authority" around here? Why should Laozi and Zhuangzi be the considered authoritative at all? In the whole decade from the mid Sixties to the mid Seventies, as much as I loved Laozi I couldn't find any good reason to say, "everything you need to know is in the Daodejing", so I widened my search, but that is another story in itself. Here I support my position about Confucianism by actually quoting from a text: Only the person who has truly realized chéng, 诚, usually rendered as "sincerity", but in this case "authentic" is a better translation, can be truly Ren and then 仁 refers to the trinity of Heaven, Earth and the Sage. Only a person who takes the conduct of a Sage as his example can achieve this, not a nonperson who lives solely to the expectations of others. A Confucian will always be mindful of the expectations of others, but will always look to his Heaven conferred nature as his model, and thus transforms the expectations of others, by living true (another meaning of chéng) to himself (herself too, of course). (Corrected spelling of person, ZYD) and point out that Confucianism teaches respecting the conduct of sages and looking to ones Heaven conferred nature as a model, where in this is "respect for authority"? The only thing that is being respected above is "our own nature", how is that not the basis for a good life? How is that not a good basis for Daoism? One could even ask what do Laozi and Zhuangzi add to this that is so wonderful? In my discussion of Chapter Five of the the DaodeJing that I cite above: I actually cite from the Daodejing. I also demonstrate a skill in textual analysis that is completely lacking in just about every other discussion of Chapter Five on the Dao Bums. In dealing with Zhuangzi's ambiguous treatment of Confucius, do I say stuff like "come on, the guys a frickin butterfly dreaming he's a human, what a load of crap!", no instead I create an amusing drama about Zhuangzi being deposed in a legal case: and then proceed to actually quote from Zhuangzi. I haven't read Zhuangzi since the seventies, and I still remembered enough of him to cite this. When was the last time that any of you critics of Confucianism read Mencius, or the Zhongyong? I realize that to fundamentalists all one does is quote from ones own scriptures about the evils of the "other", but to be honest with you, if all that your studies of "Taoism" have done is left you in a position that I can run circles around you, I don't find it not much of a recommendation for what you have learned. I will finish as I did before: Even though it is obvious that it did nothing to stop: perhaps the great Taoist sages here should try wordless teaching of their criticisms of Confucianism and shut up, since it seems that they are completely unable to put up, and if they are as advanced as they say they are, then on the authority of their own holy scripture, as I even reference in my discussion of Ren in Chapter Five cited above, all of us poor Confucians will surely convert and say "we did it on our own", and the great sages won't even have to write another word on the subject. Yes, wuwei is the way after all, well, at least the way to avoid looking like a fool. ZYD

The basis of left and right in Daoism is found in the Loshu square: East South West East North West The first thing that you need to realize about the above square is that direction wise the position of 'one" is North, thus "nine" is South, "three" is East and "Seven" is West. The Left and Right here is derived from the orientation of someone sitting in the North at "one" "and facing south toward "nine", thus East corresponds to left and West to right. This magic square is considered to be the cosmic pattern of the Earth, and is used everywhere from Feng Shui to the floor plan of Daoist Temples. The North is considered to be the direction of the sacred, and with "one", the origin of all, in the North, thus in the North is where the Cosmogenic Gods of Daoism are seated in Temples, facing South, their left sides toward the Eastern, Yang side of the Temple and their Right sides on the Western, Yin side of the Temple. There are a lot of other attributes to directions that add to this, but this is the basic pattern, and I don't have time for fuller discussion. I hope this is helpful. ZYD

Harmen, thanks for the intelligence and learning of your comments, might I suggest that the reason for the late "jing" status of the Zhuanzi has more to do with the idea that early the early Han Dynasty was Huang-Lao, rather than Zhuang-Lao: and that Zhuangzi did not reach his status as being Laozi's chief disciple until much later, after the fall of the Han Dynasty, thus the Tang recognition, which you point out: A canonization which is only appropriate since the Tang Emperors were not merely Daoist Emperors, but claimed to be patrilineal descendants of Laozi himself: After all Zhuangzi is not uniformly anti-Confucius as I point out here: So blaming his late "canonization" on largely justified, but not uniform perception of an anti-Confucius stance, doesn't seem completely convincing, I suggest that seeing it as possibly based on the need to canonize the Daode Jing as part of Huang-Lao, which was the official Han position until Hanwudi, just as the texts attributed to the Yellow Emperor were Jing: Because they were the basis for the underlying political philosophy of the Early Han. For what it's worth, that is what I would suggest. ZYD

I posted these elsewhere on the Dao Bums, I hope that they are useful: part of Tammon-Ten's (Vaiśravaṇa), The God of the North, Celestial Thunder Court.: In Daoist usage it would be Xuanwu, Mysterious Warior also known as Zhenwu, Perfect Warrior, and the Dark Emperor of the North. He is the patron or all Daoist martial arts, and Military Magic. Mount Wudang is his sacred mountain. The two handed mudras are not part of Gehong's original teachings, but were added from Buddhist sources at an early date and both Buddhists and Daoists use them. Jerry Alan Johnson has a discussion of them on pages 86 to 90 of Daoist Weather Magic and Feng Shui, which includes an illustration of the Thunder Court and the names of the important Thunder Marshals who are its principle spirits, as well as the six Jia spirits (These are also mentioned in detail in Saso's Teachings of Taoist Master Chuang and in other works by Jerry Alan Johnson) which it summons. It's transmission to Japan was probably through Buddhist sources, though no one knows for sure, there is a great deal of Daoist teachings (and Confucian too!) that came over to Japan from China. I don't know a lot about Japanese practice, but the idea that it is a legitimate Onmyodo and Shugendo practice makes a lot of sense to me. and The text is rough because the OCR software doesn't recognize Chinese characters and I don't really have time to clean it up, but this clearly shows Sugendo practice of the kuji-in and many other Daoist practices. The chapter as a whole is very informative, but obviously I cannot quote it at length. If I have time I will comment more. Edit: Connected the line containing "Rinpyótôsha cai chinretsu zalzen", which was divided. When you come across some nonsense letter combinations in the middle of text, that is the software trying to make sense of Chinese characters. ZYD

For some people mere lese magesty is enough to bring them out roaring like lions. Another form of "pain in the ass" that does not require anal rape to be a painful problem is a hemorrhoid. It is too bad that a person with an inflamed ego, did not apply some "preparation H" to herself before she decided to inflame the Dao Bums with her "witty" attempt at getting even: Possibly because this kind of magic constitutes about 90% of all magic practiced in places like Hong Kong?.. We live in an unfair society. "Getting even" sounds, well, not nice. But another way to put it is "getting back to the balanced state." Sounds nicer, eh? Technically it can be the same thing. You are wronged. You can turn the other cheek, will it restore the balance? Or will it make things a bit more "uneven?" Alternatively you can slap the cheek of the offender with the same force he applied to yours. Will it make things a bit more "even?" Many in Asia go with the second scenario. A Chinese friend of mine who traveled to a town in Hong Kong whose name I forget described a whole street of sorcerers (they like clustering specializations, there's streets of mattress makers and streets of computer assemblers and streets of sorcerers). There's hundreds of clients congregating there all day long in search of revenge. Employees wronged by bosses give the sorceress (most are female) the name, she writes it in a talismanic script on a piece of yellow paper, puts the paper on the ground, has the wronged party remove one of his shoes and pummels the name with the shoe, screaming and cursing. That sort of thing. He said he'd never been anywhere where the noise and screaming were on this level, and he's traveled the world. So, aside from the general "not nice" idea of the book's premise, what would your objections be to the procedures proposed? I was and always will be on the side of healing rather than getting even: Preventive medicine was my object in hiding Taomeow's original response. Funny how wit comes into play when we are talking TM, but when we talk jonesboy it is troll, bully, sodomite, rapist and abused. The double standards are quite amazing... People should be thinking about how they are being manipulated, used, and even abused for a misguided attempt at "getting even".

Note: This may seem a little confusing, but when this was merged, this post which I had intended as an introduction was moved to the "end" because it was later than the others. I don't know it there is a way around this. Following up on what dawei said here: Thanks to dawei we are well on the way to the Livia Kohn interview, and it looks like we have an interview with author Benebel Wen lined up. For those not familiar with her, there will be more about that later in the thread. This thread will move some things out of our update thread in" Forum and Tech Support" and bring them here, where hopefully we can revive this once exciting aspect of the Dao Bums. Zhongyongdaoist, Concierge

Thanks Earl Grey, I really appreciate your work on this, I did the best I could to promote her book here on the Dao Bums because I thought it had real value to someone who was interested. As for the way we do interviews, there has been talk about a more formal approach, but so far we haven't worked that out. If you PM me I will start work on it with staff and we will be happy to work with you, and I think Taomeow's input would be good too. ZYD

Well, I see Kar3n's back! You know what the worst thing about her was, she was always so hard working and dedicated that by the time I got around to thinking about taking care of something, she had already done it! Thanks to her I was never able to learn to do my job! Thank god she left for a while, I could actually teach myself how to set up PPDs and give people access to the Men's and Women's private forums, and even some other interesting and fun things. Granted while she was working before, I was able to do a lot of work behind the scenes researching the mystery of V-Origin, and ferreting out double accounts by similarities in posting styles, but I was still often left wondering, why I am here and for what reason exactly? Of course that was also in the Golden Heyday when we had four people on regular mod duty, and dawei as admin, and a hidden "secret chief", who could all chime in, now it is down to us to the three of us, Kar3n, dawei and myself. So I have to request that people give serious attention to dawei's request: As for Apech's departure, I can only say that he is a wonderful person of high ideals and intelligence and learning too match, but I think that he simply did not click with the way in which dawei wanted to move staff and the task of moderation, it was a challenging time of transition, and innovation. In the past Apech has made great contributions to the high standards of moderation on the Dao Bums. In the back we have a set of notes on moderation which I humorously refer to as "The Golden Tablets of Apech", but which really are a set of Golden Rules for us moderator's, and if for nothing else than that he deserves the thanks and respect of all Dao Bums, and I am personally glad that I was able to work with him at all, even for such a relatively short time. Zhongyongdaoist

I have studied the Western and Chinese esoteric traditions for a long time, some idea about my studies and approach can be found in these two threads in my PPD: What, me teach? Ok, sure why not . . . Ritual Daoism's part in Chinese Magic and Alchemy Please fee free to post questions in either of these. I haven't read Brock Silver's book, and not knowing more, cannot address it directly. Stephen Bokenkamp's Early Daoist Scripture's, last section on "The Wondrous Scripture of the Upper Chapters on Limitless Salvation", were of enormous importance to my understanding of "Religious Daoism", which I prefer to call Ritual Daoism, in its deepest and most profound meaning. Among other things it provides a good liturgical map and practice for unifying Neo-Platonic Theurgy with Daoist Ritual and internal alchemy practice. I have hinted a little about this in one of my posts on Cornelius Agrippa's use of Aristotle's Four Causes by applying Aristotle's "unmoved mover" concept to explaining the Daoist concept of wuwei, nonaction: I will take one powerful application of these ideas and apply them to modeling Daoism, since many people here have an interest both in Daoism and Western Esoteric traditions, but first I want to point out that while these Aristotelian principles are used as explanatory principles in Agrippa, in Agrippa they have been thoroughly assimilated to a fundamentally Platonist worldview, a task first undertaken by those thinkers usually categorized as Middle Platonists, whose ideas were admirably synthesized and expounded by Plotinus and his successors. The whole discussion is too long to quote here, but you can follow the link to finish it. I don't have time to say much more now. ZYD

I have given a yes vote with reservations, this is based on my person to person work over decades in short distances, and recent work with people whose judgement I trust on the Dao Bums, in the past few years. I also believe that they can be harmfuI under some circumstances. I don't have much time now to elaborate on this right now, but I will try to contribute more to this topic in a few days. ZYD

I used to be on good terms with John Berthrong, a senior colleague of hers at BU, while you have already "hooked the big fish", maybe we can use that to further connections also. Bertrhong's specialty was Confucianism, but he is a fine fellow and very knowledgeable. We might find ourselves with some really good sources at Boston University. They might not all be as well known as Professor Kohn, but might be really good sources of information, and interesting interviews too.

Thanks Taomeow, I could have hardly said it better myself, and yes it is absolutely a necessary clarification, but one which I did not have time to make today, but I have tried to make clear in my discussions on Western magic, and to a certain extent on Chinese magic. Though the misunderstanding of what "supernatural" originally meant, and the relation between supernatural in that sense and paranormal as a replacement for it, is not going to go away easily, nor is the prejudice agains magic, whether Chinese or Western, going to be easy to over come, but thanks again for your valiant effort to do so. ZYD

I had originally thought of replying to this when it first appeared, but I did not have time to compose a satisfactory post, and now what I see are well meaning oversimplifications of "Religious Daoism", and not much clarity on its relationship to Chinese "Popular Religion", of which it is almost impossible to avoid oversimplifications on anything less than a book length scale. By the way for those interested in a book length scale, the classic text is Taoism and Chinese Religion by Henri Maspero, a book which since I bought it in the early 80s has been a great help, though having been basically written before the Second World War, is definitely not a guide to the developments in the second half of the Twentieth Century. I don't have time today to post at any length, but I believe that a good starting point is a quote from Professor Jerry Alan Johnson's Daoist Internal Alchemy Neigong & Weigong, p. 329, posing the hypothetical question, “If the main purpose of teaching a religious system is to bring people into the faith, why are the teachings of the Daoist Alchemical Texts so obscure, and the true teachings hidden from the public?” His answer is simple and direct, "The answer is simple, true Daoism is a Magical Tradition, and not a Religion." Obviously Professor Johnson has similar misgivings to the use of "religion" in relation to "Religious Daoism" as led me to my own preference as I noted here: Fundamentally the "Daoist Priest" is not a priest in any way that modern usage makes clear. A Daoshi is a "Scholar of the Way" and literally a "master of ceremonies", basically an initiated practitioner of a Magical Tradition that dates back around 2,000 years, and is a synthesis of the original Heavenly Master movement, with the developments of the Shangqing and Linbao schools under the umbrella term Zhengyi Daoism, which he practices both on behalf of the community of which he is part, and for the sake of his own self development, both as a magician and practitioner of internal alchemy. As I further noted, it was to this system that I was introduced when: and part of my intent in starting the thread in my PPD: Ritual Daoism's part in Chinese Magic and Alchemy was to address some of the types of issues that have been raised here, with a more specific intent to focus on Ritual Daoism, than the Popular Religion, but to try to explicate the two, and how they are intertwined, but distinct, and based on some of the previous responses it is important to emphasize that there are clear demarcations between Ritual Daoism and, not merely the Religious, but also the popular magical traditions of China, and specifically that these differences focus on the close integration of Ritual and Alchemical practices in Ritual Daoism as I pointed out above as the "Daoist system of ritual and meditative alchemy", which is a unique system which unifies neigong and weigong, in a profound way that superficial discussion or study of the relevant texts cannot possibly convey. I hope this is helpful. It is all I have to time post right now. Edit: I was rushed enough writing the above, and my browser was asking me to please close it for updates, so I posted the above and proceeded with the updates. I have made one change which was to change "a profound system" to "a unique system" in the last paragraph, because of the use of "profound" again later in the sentence.

The love of the truth is the only sure protection we have on the path.

I was just about to ask you to clarify your principle reason for asking about this system, and whether your concern with systems was principally that of Daoist magic, or other aspects. This answer does seem to indicate an interest in magic and some familiarity with modern Western magic. In this regard you might find my own posts on Dao Bums of interest since I have studied Chinese and Western magic extensively for decades, and they might be useful to you. Here is a search for mentions of magic in posts of mine: ZYD: posts mentioning magic There's about ten pages of posts, but it should give you some interesting food for thought.

One of the things that you can do on the Dao Bums is save search results by copying the address out of the space that has the IP address of the page you on. I did a search for Tin Yat as a topic and came up with the following: Search "Tin Yat" on Dao Bums There are a lot of good posts here which should give some idea of what is going on with Yin Tat Taoism. The most important one is probably this one: Yin Tat Taoism by Yin Tat Taoist There are also a few on Mak Tin Si. In a funny example of self-reference, the first thread listed in the search is this one. To give some credit where credit is due, it was our former staff member Kar3n who found out that you could save searches like this, and it is a real useful technique for data mining on Dao Bums. Edit: Corrected link to Yin Tat Taoism

I went to the site tinyatdragon.com and it confirmed what I thought, that it is: There was a great deal of activity related to his teacher, Mak Tin Si, and Chi in Nature, when I started on Dao Bums nine years ago. So searching under Mak Tin Si, and Chi in Nature would be the way to research this. I also seem to remember that this fellow, who seems to be in charge of teaching magic now, posted in the past year or so on Dao Bums to invite people to learn Daoist magic with him. I don't think he got much of a response, as really not many here are interested in Daoist magic to begin with, though there are a small number of Dao Bums that are. As a forum, the Dao Bums has no opinion about this group, we only post the opinions and experiences of our members about it. Our members opinions have varied, but if you follow the link in the post of mine that I quoted, you can get an overview, and more of our members may weigh in here about them. I did some research on their site when I first joined here, and as far as I can tell they do not represent a lineal descent from a specific school, but that the founders do represent some authentic aspects of Chinese magical tradition, and that they believe they were authorized in visions by the highest level of the Daoist Pantheon to teach. I would suggest a lot of "due diligence" in regard to any association with them, but that is my personal opinion as a person with a good familiarity with Daoist Ritual and magic, and should not be confused with any official position of the Dao Bums, even though I am a moderator here. As I have said the Dao Bums does not have an official position on this school. I hope other members who remember past interactions with this group will join in with the discussion. ZYD

You can ask all you want, but if you don't have that dreadful wind tunnel stuff taken care of, you'll never get one! Just kidding, but you do have the wind tunnel under control don't you? And will you please try to get Inuyasha to join the Dao Bums? The higher ups have told me I can't make it conditional on Inuyasha joining, so OK, here it is: Miroku But Inuyasha had better show up! Zhongyongdaoist, Concierge

When I said: I meant it. When I said: I meant it. And while you were composing a another long post which I will have to ignore for now, and reply to at some future time, I wrote this in my PPD: Which unfortunately non Dao Bums cannot access, and now I need to get on to the other things which have little to do with posting here, I have put off doing in order to make the responses that I have in this thread. I am not kidding about being busy, nor is it some kind of excuse for not posting more on these matters, about which I could say a great deal, and have done so all over the Dao Bums for what is inching up on nine years now. and when I said this: I meant it also. ZYD

I was a teenager in the sixties, but a "child of the sixties", no, most of the sixties swirled around me with little effect, a lot of it, I rejected as silly, and, in many ways what is usually remembered as the sixties was the last half of the sixties, not the first half, and I was already a very well defined person by the time the big changes were happening. All that the "occult revival" of the sixties did was allow me to be more open about my interests. I could point out to people Aleister Crowley's picture in the crowd of "friends" on the Sgt. Pepper's album cover because I had started reading him four years earlier, in the summer of '63, probably before any of the Beatles had. It's interesting that you knew Edward Peach, he was very approachable, and invited people to contact him. I spoke with him on the phone around 1980, when I was passing through San Francisco. His assistant answered the phone and put him right on, no questions asked, we had a nice talk, but I never went further than that. As far as I'm concerned words are symbols too, that they are aural ones rather than visual ones, makes little difference if you train in certain ways, but in general, most people will respond stronger to visual symbols than verbal ones because most people are "visual". If you realize, as I did early on, that the internal processing of words is linked with deep rooted images, which is how "words make sense to you", then you can use those words to stimulate strong reactions. I think that part of Peach's teaching was in some ways a reaction against the "affirmation" type teachings of Science of Mind, and his teaching was a little more in line with magic and its training methods, as they existed in the middle of the Twentieth Century, and thus in a sense, expanded the practice of magic as a creative and practical endeavor. It could even be argued that he is the "creator" of Creative Visualization as a part of magic, something for which I don't think he gets enough credit. In the rest of your post, you raise some interesting points, but I have already put more time into these responses than I should have, and I need to get back to my own projects. I hope that we will have time to discuss these things more another time. ZYD

Then Richard de Mille is the man you want to read. He actually did review what Castaneda checked out of the UCLA library and what books he read. Here is a short online post about him: Like the above author, I read The Teachings of Don Juan, very early, not later than 1970, and found it fascinating. At the time I had already been reading books yoga, hypnotism, Western Ceremonial magic, Daoism, Tibetan Buddhism, the list goes on, since I was ten or so, and practicing as much as a teenager could of such things in the 60s. For example, I started practicing yoga in the Summer of 1961 watching Richard Hittleman's "Yoga for Health" TV program. No one in my family was into this stuff, but for me it was physics and magic, that's what I wanted to do when I grew up. As for Castaneda I read him through the publishing of Tales of Power, I think it was, where if I recall correctly, he introduced Nagual, but completely broke from any traditional Shamanic model of it, and I think that is also when he talked about meeting Don Juan in Mexico City. Since this was getting far from my original interest in his writings, I stopped at that point, though I also thought that what he was opening up was interesting in its own way, I just preferred approaching it from other directions. I read Richard de Mille's book in the late 70s, and his criticisms of Castaneda rang true, it was disappointing, but at the same time made sense of Castaneda's work up to a point, but not as far as where he went after he stepped off the Shamen's path. After that I had more interesting, and to me relevant things to study. For example around 1976 I discovered what I call Ritual Daoism, the Daoist practices that unify Ritual and Internal Alchemy methods in Michael Saso's Taoism and the Rite of Cosmic Renewal, which opened up a whole new avenue for study and research, though it took some time before I could put it into practice. While I was writing the above, Jessup2 has posted again and though I was about finished with this, I can't help commenting on: I started reading Ophiel in the summer of 1968, what a character! Many "magicians" of my generation learned a lot from him, but are too stuck up to admit it. He was without a doubt the most influential practical occultists/magician of the late 20th Century. I have great sentimental attachment to him, far more than most other modern authors, just because he cared and it showed in his writings. Reading Ophiel was like reading letters from your cranky old uncle about how to practice magic, and some of the ideas in his books are way deeper than he gets credit for, and some of it is, well silly, but all in such a lovable way, that I just had to love him. Well, that is all I have time for now. ZYD

This is in a lot of ways how I think about the matter, though "love" is far too strong a word for me to use. I read enough of the debunking material, but I was also familiar with some of the types of things he was talking about from my own practice, or traditional material that I trusted enough to see that he was moving in interesting directions, but not exactly how I wanted to pursue them. I never practiced anything of his per se, as apparently Taiji Bum has, but I have done similar things drawn from other traditions, which led me to believe that there was merit to some of what he was talking about, which is why I am interested in Jessup2's posts, he seems to have made good use of Castaneda's material. ZYD